TGI-Happening

For us, they will always be Topanga, Eric, and Shawn. The year is 1993 and three future BFF's were meeting for the first time.  Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle, and Rider Strong never could have envisioned that being cast in a new sitcom for ABC would change their lives forever and bring new meaning to TGIF.  This is how it all began...and how it looks now.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Welcome to the very first ever Pod Meets World. I
am Daniel fishal Aka to Pango Lawrence and then eventually
to Pango Lawrence Matthews. H and I am joined this
week and all the time by jump in this is
right or Strong? I played Sean Patrick Hunter. Is it

(00:38):
was my middle name? Patrick? Did that's just come to
you out of nowhere? Yeah? Well, because you threw in
your full name. I didn't realize. Did to Panga actually
change her name to Matthews? That officially I think she
was to Pango Lawrence Matthews. Interesting, I think I think
my middle name ended up being Patrick. And I definitely
remember when they introduced the last name Hunter. It was like,
you know, six episodes in. I was like, oh cool,

(00:59):
I gotta cool. I got a cool last name now
I just had Okay, sorry, I had a memory that
came to me because of what you said. But we're
getting ahead of ourselves. This is just the way it's
gonna go. Guys, Oh is it my turn? I'm sorry?
And I am will Fredell. I played Eric Neil Matthews.
I want to say and uh, And then at some

(01:20):
point he just starts calling himself Kyle. So there was
that too. Yeah, Eric. Eric's name changed with the with
the times, but yes, it is the three of us together,
and I think it was it was Neil at one point.
I think again they threw in names for us. Eventually
we go like, oh that's our name. Now. Well, the
continuity in the nineties was physically non existing. No, not great.

(01:41):
We we will definitely touch on that in this podcast.
Um which this is a perfect time to tell you
exactly what this podcast is. UM So a little history.
I guess writer Will and I are very close friends.
Um Will actually live so close to me I could
run to his house and be on his zoom in

(02:01):
about five minutes. If that seriously, I mean, if I
really ran, I could be there in thirty five seconds.
But um and so we all have varying histories, I
guess you would say with boy Meat's World and whether
or not any of us have seen them. I know
for myself I probably saw almost all, if not all,

(02:24):
of the episodes when they aired in the nineties. Because
I was twelve years old. It was my first big
major role. I was super excited to watch the show
that we had filmed probably four or five months before,
sitting around Friday Night with my family. We watched the
whole t G I F block, like a lot of
families did so eventually, once I was in high school,

(02:44):
I probably wasn't like on Friday Night necessarily always watching them.
But I think I've seen almost all of them at
least once, but it would have been back in the nineties,
and then since the nineties, I have only seen a
handful of episodes a handful of times since then. Um,
I have very few memories of what the episodes are about.
I actually think I have very few memories of even

(03:07):
filming the episodes. Um. And so I'm really excited too
kind of rewatch, but also watch for the first time,
certainly the first time with like adult eyes, um, and
to see what it's like, both the cringe and the not. Um. Yeah,
and what about you writer? Um, So I'm pretty extreme

(03:30):
and that I think I've only seen maybe four or
five episodes of Boy Beats World. Um. Um. Ever, well,
I do think I watched most of the first season,
like you, Danielle, with my family as like a thing,
But there was an episode pretty early on, and I
don't know if it was within the first season, but
I remember watching it with my family and being so

(03:51):
self conscious and just hating the way I looked, and
you know, all the like insecurities creeping in and realizing
there was nothing I could do about it, and just saying,
you know, I'm never gonna watch this show again. And
then I didn't. Um, I remember, you know, so I
don't know if you guys remember, but I so. I.
I grew up in northern California and I would fly

(04:12):
home every weekend, every Friday when we were watching the show.
So what ended up happening is I would fly from
the Bourbank Airport to Oakland Airport and it was like,
without fail, Boy Meets World will be playing in the
Burbank Airport while I was waiting for my flight, and
I can remember again being so insecure and hiding my face.
So I basically ran away from boy Meat's World all

(04:34):
my life. Um as right as it were, And I think, yeah,
so for me, this is really gonna be interesting. Um.
You know, my relationship to the show has changed drastically
over the years. I now have a kid, um, and
I am going to watch this show with my son
because he is now he's seven, and he has reached

(04:57):
the age where I think it's appropriate to watch Boy
Meat's World. Um, certainly the first season and um, and
he's like he likes sitcoms now, so yes, so I'm
really excited to see it through his eyes. Um, I'm
really excited to remember. I actually have a lot of
memories of filming. Um, this was a huge part of
my life. I UM, so I have. I have a
ton of memories to share behind the scenes, especially the

(05:20):
early years. I don't know why. I guess when you're younger,
you know, these experiences just sort of lock in place. Um.
But yeah, but mostly for me, this is about UM.
You know, I think I spent a lot of my
twenties avoiding Boy Meets World. There was a lot of
I went to college in New York right after we
finished the show, and I just wanted to be a student.
I wanted to be an academic. I now write and direct.

(05:41):
I moved away from acting completely, and so a lot
it just feels like a lot of my life has
been distancing myself from this huge part of my life that,
of course of the human population associates me with. UM
and you know, and then with Girl Meets World, there
was you know, going back to direct that show and
like that changed how I felt about so just I'm

(06:02):
in an interesting place. I think I'm going to really
like the show now. Like I think this is a
chance for me to appreciate it the way uh I
probably should have at the time, and um, you know,
because of my own issues, I did not. Um, so
I'm really excited to like feel good about this part
of my life because personally it's always felt great. My

(06:23):
relationship with you guys has always been so positive. Um,
I feel like we have so many shared positive memories
and um, I learned so much. But certainly in terms
of the cultural like what Boy Meets World is. I
didn't watch TV growing up, so like I didn't really
understand even what we were doing at the time. So
this will be interesting. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's a lot

(06:43):
to unpack in the first episode. Oh yeah, well we
got a uh yeah. My my relationship with the show
I think was different was well, it was definitely different
than that. Was also different because we were, Um you know,
as you get older, four years in a seems like nothing,
but sixteen in year twelve and you're both twelve, there's

(07:05):
the four years is a big difference. So I had
a much different experience on Boy Me tw World than
than really any of you. Did you know, I only
had to go to school the first year and and uh,
you know, it wasn't in the classroom the whole time.
But I have seen them all. I haven't seen them
since they were on. I watched them when they first
came out. I was never a PARTI er kind of
Everyone was like, oh, l a kids, and you're at clubs.

(07:27):
I still have never been to a club in my
entire life, you know, So Friday night I was home essentially,
and I would watch Boy Me Tworld. I I did.
It's as as horrible as that sounds, um, but I
haven't seen them since except for you know we've done.
That was a positive experience for you, like watching it? Yeah, yeah,
I did. You know. It was one of those things
where it was a culmination of a lot of work

(07:48):
and it was all I ever wanted to be. Yeah,
you were like, yeah, I love a TV actor, And
that's all I ever wanted to be was on a sitcom.
I know. I always tell people I never wanted to
be Michael J. Box on Back to the Future. I
wanted to be Michael J. Fox in Family Ties. That's
all I ever wanted. So I loved what I was doing.
I loved every day of it. I didn't want to
go home. I didn't want to go to sleep. I

(08:09):
just wanted to be on the set. I wanted to
be in front of the audience. I wanted to find
jokes that weren't there that was like my joy. So
I loved every second of it. I mean, again, looking
back at it, you you look back with the eyes
and adult and you say, well, wow, there's a lot
I want to kind of as we said, unpack um.
But it was it was as for the product itself,
as least as I remember it, you know, seeing it

(08:31):
at twenty four, the last time I saw it. And
then of course we've done things like we always talked
about the Scream episode, which we'll get too. So I've
seen that ten times because I've had to you know, oh,
we're gonna watch that with an audience, so we're gonna
watch that and then do a panel. So it's I've
seen that. I've seen the plays with Girls episode because
when I came back on Girl Meat World, I had
to make sure I remembered what that character is like.
But other than that, I haven't but as you both know,

(08:53):
I have kind of a creepy memory, So whenever the
show is on in front of me, I'm right back
where it was. I remember the next line coming, I
remember what I felt as I was doing it. I
remember what happened backstage, like I remember it all when
it's back in front of me. Meanwhile, I'm like, what
were we doing? There was a whole episode about like, Yeah,

(09:15):
there's so many weird episodes that I look at them
like that's me. I see me talking, but I have
absolutely zero memory of being in that scene. It's crazy,
it's weird. It's more of an empathetic thing for me
where I I get the I remember how I felt
when I was doing it, and I instantly feel the
same way. So it's it's either I'm very anxious, you know,

(09:36):
like we'll get into talking about how we're going to
watch the first episode, but I watched it first episode
and even pressing play, I was anxious. And I knew
I was going to be anxious because not only am
I an anxious person, but going back into the world,
and also because I was so anxious when we did
the pilot. I was so anxious when we did the
first episode, so I instantly kind of channeled that feeling again.
It's very odd to go back, but um, I think
it's about time that we do, frankly, because we're coming

(09:57):
at it from three different places. Yeah, I hope I
have a similar experience to Will, and I wish I
had more of a similar memory experience like writer, I don't.
I loved every second of doing the show when I
was a kid. I loved it, um certainly when we
first started season one, season two, season three. By the

(10:17):
time we got to the seventh season, sixth season, even
I was starting to be like but like the beginning
of it, I loved every second of it, and all
I cared about was but I got to do more,
and I felt the same way Will did, Like I
just wanted to be on set. It was hard for
me to sleep. I'd get excited, but you know, before
the next day of work. And yet, as it's probably

(10:38):
something I should unpack in therapy or something, I don't
have a lot of memories like I have very like
and I don't know why I don't. There was no
like trauma in my childhood that I'm aware of. I
just I had a really like positive life experience, and
I loved being on the show, and yet memories for
me over all stages of my life are very few

(11:00):
and far between, and I don't really know why. So
I have a theory about that. I have So my
theory about that is essentially, no matter what you're doing,
how extraordinary it is, if you do it every day,
it just becomes your day to day life. So going
and asking, you know, somebody who wasn't on a television show,
talk to me about what it was like, you know,
certain weeks during the sixth grade, you're also not going

(11:22):
to have those same kind of memories. I mean, it's
just well, that's the thing. Our weekly schedule was the same, right, right,
and we should talk about that. I feel like we
should explain what it was like to actually be on
the show because because, yeah, it becomes regular even though
each episode is different. There obviously, you know, we're playing
the same character, We're in the same sets for the
most part, and then behind the scenes, we're following the

(11:43):
same schedule every week. We go to school for certain hours,
we rehearsed for certain hours, we have the live show
on Thursday night where the audience comes in. We're wearing
a lot of the same wardrobe. So in a weird way,
it lends itself to amnesia, right, it becomes repetitive and
you start taking it for granted. Um, But unlike you, Daniel,
I was I didn't want to be there from the gig.

(12:04):
I remember. I have this very distinct memory of of
when we got picked up for the back nine and
calling my girlfriend at the time, Bag in Northern Caliber
when I was thirteen years old, just so love sick as,
which we will certainly talk about because I always was
love sick and I just remember telling her like I
signed a seven year contract I will be twenty years old,
that this show keeps going, and thinking that was just death,

(12:25):
like that was going to be the worst thing. Can
you imagine if this possibly kept going until I was
twenty because I just did, you know, I wanted to
be home. I wanted to be like with me and
and yeah, and then that's exactly what happened. So question,

(12:47):
why were you on the show? Why were you an
actor who didn't want the job? What was the motivating
factor then to become an actor? Great question. No, I
definitely wanted to be an actor. Boy Meat's world was
like my job up, do you know what I mean? Like,
I was already It's so crazy to think about, but
at thirteen, I was all pretty cynical. I had already done.
I had already done the TV series that I wanted

(13:08):
to do, which was a TV series where I got
to play Julie Andrew's son, and I, you know, I
had a much bigger part. It was so much fun.
It was my first sitcom. We did seven episodes. Blake
Edwards was directing, a legendary director. It was like and
and we had all the attention, you know, Julie Andrews,
the sound of music, Mary Poppins. I was playing her son.
I loved it so much. And we had done that

(13:30):
for two years before Boy Meets World, and it only
filmed seven episodes and they dumped it. The show just
got dumped on the summer program on Saturday nights. And
so by the time Boy Meets World came around, it
was like I had agents and managers and everybody saying,
this is good, you should just get on another pilot,
just do another pilot this year. And I wanted to
do movies. I wanted to do plays. I you know,

(13:52):
I started with Lama's Rob like I thought, you know,
I just I just thought, like, and here was boy
Meets World, which at the time, if you guys remember
it is called the untitled Ben Savage Project. It was
being built around Ben, and so my part was tiny.
I think in the original pilot script only had two lines.
And so I, you know, I I wanted to act,
but for me, Boy Me Toord was just like one

(14:13):
of the many jobs I was doing or that I
wanted to do, And so the fact that it became
this hit surprised me and sort of threw me for
a loop. And like I said, I didn't watch television,
so I didn't even really understand like what we were doing,
like what a sitcom was versus um a soap opera
versus a movie. You know, I I liked movies, but

(14:35):
when it came to television, I didn't understand like the form.
I didn't I didn't watch that form format growing up.
So I always, you know, I just was kind of
like lost and kind of felt I felt like an outsider.
Frankly um and I felt like an outsider in Los Angeles.
I never felt super comfortable like around other actors. And
it wasn't until our set that I really became friends

(14:57):
with other child actors. You know, I think there's a
protective thing. You know, every every child actor has a
parent behind them, at least one who's helping them, you know,
manage and navigate their career. And yeah, I mean that's true.
You were older and you used to just take a
bus into New York City right by myself. My parents
are lawyers, my dad was. We got a lot to

(15:19):
impact that. But yeah, but I mean I guess like
for me, there was always this fear sort of you know,
bread into me by my parents of like and my
parents were always afraid of being a stage parent, right
and then being a brady child actor like those There
was this fear. It's like this this lingering thing that
constantly hangs over you as a child actor, Like you

(15:42):
don't want to be like them and they're like these
monsters who only care about like, you know, getting the
job and fame, and like that was like this bread
into me by that by the time I did bore
me to world that like it was a protective show
that my parents had sort of put around me, like
make sure you have a nor more childhood and make
sure you stay in school and focus on you know

(16:03):
the important things in life, and don't get too caught
up like acting is great, the art is great, but
don't get too caught up in you know, the craziness.
And there was craziness, you know. I mean it's like
we did pretty well, Like at a lot of the
nineties kid actors turned out way better. But if you
think about the eighties, like there was this sort of
reputation of like you're going to hold up a liquor

(16:25):
store one day if you don't keep working right, or
you're gonna you're gonna become a drug addict, or like
being a child actor was fraught. It was constantly fraught
with this danger like you're gonna fall off a cliff
if you're not careful, and your whole life could be ruined.
And we all felt that, right, I mean like there
was an awareness of that, and I think I just
internalized it. So let's let's actually talk a little bit

(16:47):
about what our Boy Meets World schedule was, because it
wasn't It was a little bit of a unique schedule
because Michael Jacobs um celebrates the Sabbath on Friday evenings
and so which is when most most shows shoot. Most
show shoots, like most shows have a Monday through Friday schedule,
which is what I think people think of when they
think of starting a work week. You go to work

(17:08):
on Monday, you enterer week on Friday, and you have
the weekend. UM Michael wanted to have our live studio
audience tapings on Thursday nights, which meant our first day
of rehearsal was Friday morning. And every show, every sitcom show,
starts off UM their week with a table read. So
Friday morning we would show up to a room like

(17:29):
a conference room and there were lots of chairs set
up and the ABC and Disney executives would be sitting
in those seats, along with our parents or whoever else
was there, our studio teachers, UM, and the some of
the crew. And then we had a long conference table
set up with name tags for all the actors and
that there were two tables. They were set up like
a t so a really long one for all the actors.

(17:51):
And then at the top of the tea was where
the writers, producers Michael Jacobs where and the director where
they sit and then we just read the script. Did
you guys prep before a table read or did you
like to go in cold um. So first of all,
I think one of the things we we have to
say is we eventually got a room. If if memory serves,

(18:11):
when we started, we were in trailers. Do you remember
that at at the Disney lot, we were in like
this big trailer. I don't remember that at all. So
this big trailer is where we had our for I
distinctly remember. So my parents to live in the same
house back in Connecticut where I grew up. I was
home not too long ago, and I was cleaning out
my desk and I came upon I kept a diary

(18:34):
for like the first three months. I did boy, because
of course I was going to write in it every day.
And it lasted about three months. And the first entry
was the first table read and I literally I read
it was the two page thing. And I was talking
about how we walked into the trailer. I you know,
we met this diary right now, But I remember the

(19:01):
thing I remember most about it. So we would I
would prep as much as I could, having any idea
what I was doing, because we didn't get the scripts
the night until the night until the night before. We
get the scripts and we get them delivered because of
course nothing was emailed so envelope. But drive to our
house and drop a script off on the porch, and

(19:22):
we will get into more about why that is awful
for the production assistant when they're rewriting till four o'clock
in the morning. But we get there and I had
never done a table read. I did not know we
were starting with a table read. I did not know
what it was. And they we I walked in with
the script. They sat me down at the table. My
mom was there. I'll never forget that. And my hands

(19:43):
and feet were shaking so much that I kept everything
tucked under the table. So for the first table read,
it's just like my head was sticking above the table
as everything was shaking, and so I prepped as much
as I could. But I didn't know anybody. I didn't
know what I was doing. We will get into watching
first episode. Clearly, I didn't know what I was doing
until several episodes into the series. Um, but it was

(20:06):
it was really scary. And then you read it like
a straight play. You read it straight through, like from
beginning to end. Somebody's reading the stage directions to Pango,
walks in to Chubbies and sits down with Corey, Hey, Corey,
how's everything going? So, I mean, you read it straight through,
and this is really a process to test jokes fundamentally,
you know, and to see if the episode is working,
because what the writers are doing is they're listening and

(20:28):
they're taking notes and if people don't laugh, that's that's gone.
And there were things where the actor was gone too
after a table read. You It didn't happen all of them,
but there were times where it was like they were
not just testing us but also the actor and it
was like, hey, I can't wait to work with you. Jimmy,
where's Jimmy. Jimmy's gone. Jimmy had two jokes and somehow
missed three of them, so he's gone. It's really it's

(20:50):
a constantly evolved like throughout the week, the script is
being rewritten multiple times a day. We you know, after
the table read, we then go into the rehearsal period,
which based last the next three days where we're rehearsing
on our feet with their scripts in hand, and the
you know, the scripts are constantly changing, so you can't
memorize anything. You know, some of us would, but as

(21:11):
we got better, I feel like we did start memorizing
it almost immediately, like your brain clicked into this zone.
But for the most part we'd be on stage and
and and it would just be the actors, the director,
a script supervisor. Who else would be there, like maybe props,
the teacher, A very small group of us would be
going through the scenes and putting it on its feet.

(21:33):
And we would do that the first day, get new
scripts that night. It was a very light rehearsal because
Mike Will said there was almost always a full script
rewrite immediately after table read, and so they were rewriting
on Friday, which lets the director and the actors know,
don't memorize too much of this, don't put it on

(21:54):
its feet too much, because whole things may change. Sets
may you may not be no longer in the classroom,
You're going to be in the living room, like a
lot of things can change. So you do like a
really fast light rehearsal on Friday, and then you come
in ready to go on Monday for a full Monday
rehearsal and then run through that night for the producers
and writers. The network run through is not until the

(22:15):
next day. Now I didn't even know what to run through.
Was nobody. Nobody prepared me for any of this. So
when they're like, hey, are you ready for the run through?
I had no idea what that meant. So what is
a run through? Will explain that. So a run through
is you do the entire show from beginning to end.
You're holding the scripts because you don't you haven't memorized
the lines by this point. Costumes, nomes, no props, no cameras.

(22:37):
You're just running it through like a play, from beginning
to end. There's a bank of director's chairs set up
in front of whatever. You know, say you're in the
classroom scene, there's a bank of director's chairs. All the
producers and directors sit there, which is basically where the
fourth wall should be, because everything camera, where the cameras
would be, there's just a bank of chairs. And then

(22:57):
we run, we go through it, and we'd blinds and
we'd miss jokes and we you know, then you literally
you would get up and walk to the next area
where there be more chairs set up, and you'd continue
the show and you'd run it from beginning to end. Uh.
And I did not know that was happening. And then
I also did not know that was followed, especially on
a Michael Jacobs set, by the note session, the notes.

(23:20):
Someone talk about the note session please, because I'm getting
adjective just thinking. So typically after a run through the
everybody gathers in one of the sets. Everyone sits down,
all the actors and one side, and all the writers
on the other side, and the executive producer and or
the director, but mostly the executive producer gives feedback on
what just happened on the run through. And this feedback session,

(23:42):
I think on most shows probably is like twenty minutes,
which is like, hey, this joke didn't work, and they
give notes to the actors if they have any like hey,
could you try it this way? Try it that way.
With Michael Jacobs, who was the creator of Boymate's World, um,
he's kind of he was really into the notes sessions.
We would have one to two hour long notes sessions

(24:03):
and he would open up a script and say, all right,
page one line one, page one line one, page one
line one and uh the memory I can hear his
pages turning, snap snap snap. Yeah. Michael took notes sessions
to a performance art. It was really just about him

(24:24):
giving you know. He would he would most often talk
to the actors. He wouldn't talk so much about the
script at that stage. As the show went on, it
became more of an open process, I feel like where
he would admit, like, oh, we gotta fix this whole
scene or this whole thing. But for the most part
it was a chance for him to try and explain
to us, like what they were aiming for and where
we missed the markets actors or what was going wrong, um,

(24:46):
And and then they would go off after the two
hour notes session. The writers would then end up writing
all night, like you know, on our show as opposed
to other shows, I think they would go into like
two in the morning that night rewriting, and then we'd
get a new script the next morning with some changes, um,
and then do it all over again this time and
the core p a farrier person would drop off the

(25:09):
scripts at whatever time they finished writing them, so that
we had them for the drive to work the next morning.
We didn't have to wait till we have to say
so much paper. But also like like a four am
do covered script would just be on the porch sometimes
because the sprinklers had gone on in the morning or
whatever and it had just been delivered and there are
eleven cast members that lived all over Los Angeles. It's

(25:32):
not like Danielle and I right now where we live
thirty seconds from each other. It was somebody driving all
over l A. And apparently they were you know, it
wasn't just for us. It was the thing that we
didn't realize is that every change they make effects wardrobe,
every change they make effects set to, every depiction head
gets a script. Everybody got a script. So they were
delivering arguably fifty seventy five scripts a night. Um, you know,

(25:55):
all over Los Angeles at three o'clock in the morning.
These poor p a s for no money and I
mean just to be part of the industry, and they're
the unsung heroes of the show. But it was, it
was the whole experience was was insane. And then and
then we get to so that was Monday, and that
was studio run. That was we should also insert. Meanwhile,

(26:18):
for those of us children who were in school, we
have to do by California state law, three hours of
school a day. So what sounds like nothing, no, but
it's actually a lot when you're one on one with
a teacher. In our case, we had we had two teachers.
Ultimately the show, and we first started we only had one,
but ultimately we ended up having two teachers who they
are basically our personal tutors because all of us are

(26:41):
in different grades. Ben and I was one grade older
than Ben, and Danielle you were even a grade younger
than Ben. I think when you were in high school.
I was a senior and enior high so we so
you had two teachers having to navigate completely different subject
matters um and we would get all of our work
from our school ahead of time, and so we'd be

(27:01):
showing up with our own textbooks, our own subjects, our
own set of requirements, and these teachers would spend you know,
three to four hours a day with us being like
all right, right, or you're working on your English paper
right now, go ahead, that's what you're doing for the
next twenty minutes. Then you have Latin, and then they'd
be doing Latin declensions with Ben and like, you know,
it's just our classroom became, you know, this whole other

(27:23):
level of work that we were doing. So even when
you know, normally on a show you would get a
break and be able to sit in your dressing your room,
and I don't know the break is usually then when
you're not in the scene, so the scene now doesn't
involve Sean or doesn't involve air, if it doesn't involve
to Pega, you would normally then go get a break.
And for us, that's where we would go, get to bank,
twenty or thirty minutes of school, go do twenty or
thirty minutes of school. It wasn't ever three hours of

(27:45):
school consecutively. It was twenty minutes here, forty minutes there,
possibly an hour if you were so lucky. Um, and
so we'd run back to our classroom and uh school
as we can pass the spic craft craft service tables
have good How many Twizzlers are there? Yea? There so much,
so much food and nothing to get. But so much

(28:06):
of our social life did revolve around the school classroom,
you know, which is interesting because I think people always
imagine us on set hanging out, which we did, but
when we were on set, we were often working on
the scene. Are real, downtime are real like getting to
know each other, hanging out, getting to know each other's parents,
who were always there. By the way, we always had
to have our parents, so you you have to imagine

(28:26):
that there's a you know, for every kid, there's a parent.
Also on set, there's a studio, there's a studio teacher
or two, and we would be hanging out. We would
have the craft service table, which is the table that
has all the snacks and coffee and tea, and then
there'd be our classroom, which was a trailer the first season.
It was just a trailer, had a couch and tables

(28:47):
and like you know, we our studio teachers would put
little posters on the wall and try and make it
look like a classroom. But it never really felt like
a classroom because I wasn't a cat with the hang
in there baby, you know, like okay, but that's where
our social life like really like that's where we really
got to know each other, right, is like running around
backstage um, and you know, and the stage itself is

(29:08):
these huge sound stages like just these big warehouse um.
And we were on the Disney lot the first year,
which is which was the biggest stage by the way,
in their film stage which is which is stage two,
which is was not broken in half. Most of the
stages were broken in half and in behalf the sides.
We were in this cavernous, ridiculous stage where it was like, oh,

(29:29):
we've got to build a giant pirate ship building on
stage two. So that home improvement store. Ye. And then
was thunder ali going that first season, Yes, thunder Alley
with Andrew Keegan and who else was on that ed
um uh he passed not to ed Asner. Oh yeah,
that's right. So there was So there was this weird
little community too of like our outside of our stage,

(29:53):
there was a there was a wreck room that they
had set up for all the kids of Disney. Do
you remember this we where we did him. Yeah. Yeah,
So we had pe which basically meant we'd go and
play ping pong or football football. We did play football
on asphalt by the way, which with the home improvement
kids all the time, it was it was like oh wait, okay,

(30:14):
so Jonathan Taylor Thomas is on Leon Nora, so that's
not a good matchup right, I'm going to hit you
in the corner. They're trying not to, you know, run
into the rusty nails on the side of that thing. Wait.
And then Haley Joel Osmond was on thunder Alley too, right,
kid though, like he was Yeah, but it was I
remember you. They brought in Nintendo six was it wasn't

(30:36):
even sixty four at the time. It was Nintendo whenever.
The second one was Superintendo, Super Nintendo. And you were
a street Fighter from your Master street Fighter two street
Fighter to Master and every time oh yeah, oh yeah,
that's the thing. He became a joke. It was just
you know what it was. It was wreck. It was
like R and R, you know, like to let us

(30:57):
out in the yard. We could do whatever we want
a cigarettes and we did, but it was you try
to play writer in in Street Fighter. And one could
be the most frustrating thing ever still to this day,
and that was Jim. That was just then go hey,
I got my exercise in. Then I'd go and smoke
a cigarette and go back to work. What are you
smoking at the time, Yes, was smoking king sixteen year old,

(31:22):
like kidding. By sixteen, I'd already been smoking first. And
the most fun thing about that is that like none
of the grown ups like stopped you or like they
were like, okay, you know it, because now they down
are you kidding? I? I had just celebrated that, and
I'm telling I would need to tell everybody this. On
the seven of May, I celebrated my eighth year without

(31:43):
a cigarette. Please quit smoking. It's very horrible for you.
But by the time I knew it was bad for me,
I was hooked. So I mean I was. I was
smoking heavily by fourteen, and I'd already probably started smoking
at eleven. I was going to New York, I was
already on television. I was, you know, it was the
thing to do, and then you start doing it because
it's cool, and then you're addicted to it. And where

(32:03):
would you smoke at Disney? I remember you smoking it
wrap side right outside the stage. I don't remember that area,
Like I guess. I just didn't hide anything, like my
pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket. And Bill Daniels
every day would walk up to me and he tapped
the pack of cigarettes and ego right next to your
heart and walk away and just he would do that,

(32:26):
or he would do that every day, every single day,
right next to your heart. And it's like one of
those things where you're like, come on, I'm sixteen, I
know the world. I know everything, And you look back
now and it's like, man, if you just listened, you know,
of course that is the hashtag to yours. So if
you're you're young and you're smoking or you're thinking thinking
to smoke, so it's just not worth it. It really

(32:46):
is not worth it. So yeah, I mean I was
already I had a much different Like you talk about
parents on the setting all stuff, I am from a
very close knit family. It sounds like I'm not, but
I'm from a very very close knit family. My parents
just celebrated their fifty wedding anniversary fifty ninth wedding anniversary.
Were all super close. But my parents are were two
lawyers in Connecticut. My dad is still a practicing lawyer's

(33:07):
eighty three years old. My mom ran all three of
the courts in Connecticut. My dad was also a captain
the Navy. They're like, if you want to go do
this you we're not going to stand in your way,
but we can't give up our lives to come with you.
So they used to pick me up at school, drop
me off at the bus in Farming Tea in Connecticut.
I'd take a three hour bus ride down in New York,
where my manager would pick me up most of the time.
Sometimes he didn't. I was ten or eleven, I'd walk

(33:29):
the streets in New York go to my audition, grab
a slice of pizza, come back and go and go
home and buy eleven or twelve. I lived in the
city because I was on a show, and then I
got Boy, Met World, and that was it. My first
guardian was my oldest brother's fraternity brother, Spencer, who is
still a good friend of mine, lives right down the street.
You live in the city with my oldest brother, my

(33:50):
oldest brother at the time, with Gary. No no no no.
I live with Gary, my older brother Gary. At the time,
I was eleven years old, twelve years old doing don't
just sit there. So I lived in New York with Gary,
who is retired from Wall Street at forty five years old,
but at the time to live with me. Took a
job as a janitor and was a januitor in New
York so we could have an apartment, and I was
on a show at Nickelodeon. I was on Nickelodeon from

(34:13):
like twelve to fifteen, and then I got Boy at
sixteen and moved out to l A. But and you
were that cool guy from New York, you know. They
were always when your kids, when your kid after you
always auditioned for stuff, and then it always comes down
to the same three people. You know, it's like because
because there's the pool was very limited back then, so
it was like, you know, it's always me Elijah Wood
and like, uh Ben. I first met Ben because Ben

(34:34):
and I screen tested against each other for Newsies. Do
you guys remember, of course, yeah, the musical news Hees.
So it was down to Luke Edwards who ended up
getting it. This kid named Ben Savage who I met
that day, and then me Um and we all we
had we had to sing, we had to dance and act,
and back then they did screen tests on thirty five
millimeter on the Disney lot, so we had a full

(34:56):
film shoot. Anyway, that's a whole another shot. But but yeah,
but so but then there was always whenever they would
have these auditions, like there would always be that cool
guy from New York. You'd get flown in from New
York and they always got the part. You'd always be like, ah,
we're just the other schmucks from l A. Will always
see each other. But yeah, I remember, Yeah, your life
must have been so different from ours as far as

(35:16):
being a kid actor man, because in the woods in
Connecticut and it was like, you know, I would I
would go back to my regular life in Connecticut, which
was the best. But then I, oh, I have an
audition today, I have to go shoot a commercial today.
The bus would pick me up. I would go down
to the bus and I would do my job whatever
I had to do, and then back home to Connecticut.
You know. It was That's just that's how it was.

(35:37):
So it was much different from me. The whole l
A thing was very When I finally didn't move out
to Los Angeles, I didn't like it. It was very weird.
I was very disconnected from everybody. You guys were so
much younger than I was, and I was right in
the middle. So I was either too old or too
young to really hang out with anybody. Um. Luckily I
met Marsden right away, and and so Jason who played

(36:00):
Jason mars who is still still one of my best
friends in the world. And um, we had a small
little group of friends. But they're like, hey, man, didn't
you go a party and do my I would get
back to to Connecticut, my friends like, what's the club
seem like? I was like, I don't know what. I
don't know the racket clubs, okay, what they let me in,
But I just it was not that kind of big

(36:22):
party thing for me, and it was yeah, very okay.
So we've made it to Wednesday. So Wednesday was pre
tape day, and so we were finally bring We talked
about Tuesday run through being for the network, then they
brought up the networking. Tuesday was then the same day
rehearsal day, and then we run again for network um

(36:42):
and then Network gets to give notes to Michael, and
then Michael get deliver's notes to us, and then Wednesday
they bring in cameras and we shoot everything that we're
not going to shoot in front of the audience. So
all of the sets that take place directly in front
of the audience are usually the ones that you want
the audience to see. Anything that's called on a swing
set that's like off to the side that you can't see,

(37:02):
you shoot that stuff, or a scene that maybe does
take place right in front of the audience but is
very intricate or detailed or extremely long and it's going
to take a long time and you don't have that
much time in front of the audience. You shoot that
on Wednesday, So that is called pre tape day. And interestingly,
on our show, they started bringing in an audience for
that pre tape day. Do you remember this? They figured out, Yes,

(37:24):
they figured out that we really thrived with an audience.
I mean, like all you know, good comedy shows and
so what they they figured out that on Wednesdays they
could bring in school buses of school kids and like
make it like a field trip. So we started having
really small audiences of just high schoolers or like kids
on Wednesday. So we started doing our pre tape with

(37:47):
an audience, which is really unusual. Yeah, that was something
that I don't think other shows ever really did. And
what you know, I might have been jumping ahead. It
might not have been until third or fourth season that
we started doing that, but certainly, like we we broke
the sort of a calm rules by having an audience.
Did we do that through the end? By see if
the season seven we were bringing in an audience on Wednesday.
Really I kind of remember it at the end. I

(38:09):
kind of remember a weird but Thursday, we still pre
tape stuff in the early part of the day, right
we'd be pre taping, we'd be rehearsing for camera because
the camera people, you have four cameras going at the
same time and basically The way you you shoot a
sitcom multi camera sitcom is that you're performing at like

(38:30):
a play, and then the cameras are also constantly moving. There,
these big cameras on wheels, so the camera operators have
to make sure that they set up the shot for
the joke or for the person that has the next line,
So they're basically memorizing the script like the actors, or
they're just kind of on the fly making sure that
they get the shots that they need. So it's like
this interesting ballet between the actors moving around the set

(38:52):
doing the scene and the cameras where the fourth wall
is also moving around and shifting and trading places. And
so we would rehearse to get that of them down
so that we could only do we would only have
to do two or three takes in front of the
audience and just really make it, give it that live sense,
you know, like what I mean. And this is the
form that I love. Lucy really established. They did it
with three cameras. By the time they got to us,

(39:13):
it was four cameras, um. And it's an amazing form.
I mean it it's kind of old fashioned now, right,
it's like gone out of style. It's but it's almost
like a radio play, you know what I mean. It's
like it doesn't look real like the set, you know,
the way people interact, with the way people move, it's
not realistic, but it's so fun. It's it's it's like

(39:34):
sort of the last connection between television and live theater.
And as an actor, it's the best because it's so
much easier. Like when you do single camera shows, you
have to you know, redo the same thing over and
over for a million different camera angles. They have to
adjust the lighting every time. In this case, you just
do it two or three times and you try and
make it as funny as possible. Yeah, and you know,

(39:57):
it's also really great to what was back then a
special because we there was no social media, so we
didn't have direct contact with people watching the show ever
unless we were out in the world after the show
started airing, and every now and then people might say, hey,
are you I watched that show, But otherwise our our
direct contact with people who watched the show was non existent.

(40:17):
And so getting a group of people whether or not
they had ever seen the shoot the show before, we
didn't know or didn't care, but we knew people were
going to get to see us do it in live time,
and the energy that the audience brings from the moment
it's Thursday morning, we just know like, oh my gosh,
I have this live, live show day energy. And you

(40:38):
could hear them getting loaded into the audience and we're
getting our hair and makeup done backstage and you know
we're back. We're backstage and we're cracking jokes and I
Will is making fun of everyone's wardrobe. And then ritual,
a cast ritual. We had the cast screens scream because
they would introduce us one by one in front of
the audience to start the show. Because I have a

(40:59):
war up MC comedian named Mitch what was Bank? Mitch
Bank was our warm up. He was a comedian actor guy,
and so to produce Michael's other show, and he em
seed every one of our episodes from start to finish,
and he um so he would warm up the audience
and just talk to them, play games with them or whatever,
and then he would introduce us one at a time.
And so we would gather backstage behind one of the sets,

(41:22):
usually the living room set, and we would be so
nervous and excited and all the stuff that would be
going into the week would just be bubbling and we
would put our hands together in a circle and scream
at the top of our lungs, and then we would
get introduced one by one um and then they would
be off to the races, getting the show that you know,

(41:42):
I have to say exactly what Danielle was just talking about.
I might miss that energy before the show of all
of us standing back there, and it's exactly like Danielle said,
there's there's this. It takes over all your senses. You
hear the audience come in, if you feel the temperature
in the building rise a bit because there's now three
people in there. You hear them laughing at the warm up.

(42:04):
But especially when the later seasons, when you knew they
waited in line because they just wanted to see us.
It wasn't like, hey, what's this show? It's I can't
believe I get a chance to see Boy Meets World.
And there was such an energy about that that you
feel like you can walk on water and all the
lights are down to it's all dark for the first
time because the week it's all just been you know,

(42:24):
worklights and you're just in the giant warehouse. But that
night everything gets dark. It's pitch black. Backstage, you're in
your wardrobe. You've got you know, it's like you've got
you've got crisp new clothes on, you know your lines,
You're ready to go. You're thinking about the jokes. We
have such a tight like bond because we've been working
on this through the week, so we've seen the evolution
of the script and of our characters and of our

(42:45):
rehearsal process, and we've complained to each other and maybe
like we've definitely rooted for each other, and we've seen
us get bad notes and good notes, and here it is.
It's all culminating in this moment, and it's the most
fun three and a half hours. You work the entire
week for those three and a half hours, and they
call your name and you run out, and the audience screams,

(43:08):
and you get to see all your friends standing there
waiting to get knowing they feel exactly the way you do.
It's such a bond with the cast and uh and
then they yell action and you're just off to the races.
It's it's wonderful. It's wonderful, it really is. I miss it.

(43:32):
So I am very very excited for this podcast because I, Um,
I really want to do like this big nostalgia dive,
not just two for the show, but even just for
my own life. I'm excited to do this nostalgia dive
and talk about what we're wearing and what the style was,
and whether or not I would still wear the thing

(43:52):
I'm wearing back then or whether I would never be
caught dead in it. Um. I'm looking forward to all
of that. I'm also super excited. We're going to have
ton of amazing guests. We are going to have Train McGee,
Betsy Randall, Rusty Russ who played Mom and Dad, Bill Daniels.
Of course, the famous Mr Feeney is going to be
joining us. Um, We're going to have Matt Lawrence, maitland Ward.

(44:15):
We're also going to invite a lot of our famous
guest stars. Jason Marsden, who we already mentioned, is hopefully
going to come by and Okay, great, Yeah, We're gonna
have a lot of a lot of great guest stars.
We're also going to have writers and directors and crew
if we're able to find them. Like talking about wardrobe,
there are several wardrobe people I would love to have

(44:36):
on to talk about what The inspiration behind shirts on
shirts on shirts was how many? The question became how
many hoods could you wear? Is three was one too many?
Too many? Let's find out about focus on. I mean,

(45:00):
hair was a big one, which is so weird because
like I just remember thinking, like why do they care?
And then it became a thing like our hair. You know,
people cared about it, like audiences would like, you know,
like my hairstyle, this butt cut middle part, what do
you want to call it? I don't even know. It's
like become this iconic thing that I couldn't escape. You know,

(45:20):
I still can't escape, but uh, and like I just yeah,
there's there's a lot, there's a lot lot going. It
was a big Hair was a big thing. Hair was
a thing on our show. Yeah, very strange. So why
don't we talk about some frequently asked questions? Just to
get some of these things out of the way. We
know that we know you have them. We get asked
them all the time. I think the number one most
frequently asked question as of late is where's Corey? Just

(45:45):
like that because they don't know his name, Because you know,
we get referred to as our characters more often than
not Um and we get it. You know, we were
in your house every week for seven years with those
names not as Danielle Writer, Ben and and Will Um.
So where is Ben Savage? Ben Savage is um doing
his own thing. He's doing Lifetime movies. He's busy. We

(46:08):
would love for him to have been a part of
the show. We asked him to be a part of
the show. Um, we have been talking about this podcast
since two thousand eighteen. Yeah, it was actually Will's idea
was your idea? It was my I was the first person.
We all went to a convention, because conventions when we

(46:29):
get to meet our fans. And after one of the conventions,
I was like, why don't we just do a podcast
where we watch it? And it was before everybody did
it now everybody. It was literally it was before office ladies.
It was before rewatch podcasts or even a thing. Okay,
writer was Writer's idea. I was going to take the
credit to well, I'll take the credit my idea idea.
And we were like, wow, that is a really good idea.

(46:51):
We should talk about it. And then we talked about
it with Ben and Ben was like, I'm not sure
it's really my thing, and we said, okay, we totally
understand and we'll come back to you if it ever
becomes anything. And then we took a couple of meetings
back in two thousand and eight talked about it. Then
UM brought it up to Ben again and said, are
you sure this is something we really want to do.
We think it could be really great and he said,

(47:13):
it just really is not my thing and we have
respected that, and UM, it's not his thing. So that
is why Ben is not here. UM, and let's see
other frequently asked questions. Uh, we always get asked what
our favorite episode is that? Yes, which, and it's always
the same thing. We always say it's we call it
the screen episode, the screen episode, but it was called

(47:34):
and then there was Sean, which was the Halloween episode.
I think there are a bit more answers to that question, though,
because depends on what you mean. That is my favorite
episode because of the memory of making it. But if
you ask me what the quality of the episode is,
I think there are other answers. And I'm so curious
because I only have memories. I don't know, you know,
watching it, there's going to be a new answer, basically,

(47:54):
like going to discover oh, that is like a solid episode,
you know, in terms of objectively speaking, not just your
memories of it. To your point, the Scream episode is
my favorite episode for the memory of making it as
an ensemble. I have other favorite memories of like favorite episodes,
especially from season one that just we're really salient to

(48:17):
me as a little girl making the show like will.
One of my favorite episodes is the episode where out
of nowhere randomly to Panga has a crush on Eric
and Eric that was a great episode. No recollection of
thatch a good episode. Grab your face, you come in
to kiss me, to kiss you, kiss me, you palm,
and I can remember what your palm smelled like, Like

(48:41):
I right, for someone who has no memories at all,
I remember, and I think it was because it was
super awkward. It was award you know, you were sixteen
and I was twelve at that time and you were twelve. Yeah,
and I and it was it was just awkward and weird,
and I remember, but I remember you being so like Obviously,

(49:02):
I haven't even been on stage for very long. This
was maybe even only my third, maybe my fourth episode ever. Um,
but you were so easy to be around. We had
such a good time. And then as we know, to
Panga and Eric were practically never we never really had
scenes were reinteracted like that episode is one of my
favorites for that reason, So yes, I remember that episode.

(49:23):
Is hard to pin down because we have favorites for
so many different reasons. And it will change. I think
writer's right when we watch it will change for exactly
that reason, like oh that one was special to me
or this one, and then yeah, they will get into
the whole thing because they then went weird with with
Eric and to Pango where then it was like we
ended up in bed together at one point, and do
you remember do you remember this where I'm like, I

(49:44):
need a roommate, so you'd get it, you like get
ready for bed and you slide into bed and then
I'm over there. I'm in bed like hey, roomy because
that's not creepy at all. I'm just be with you.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, they would. They did stuff like
that too, where it was just like, oh, that's really weird.
I'm just gonna get in bed with my brother's girlfriend,
like really bizarre stuff. So yeah, that was will unpack

(50:04):
all as we keep saying, we'll unpack all this as
we go, we'll unpack that for sure. Um. Any other
frequently asked questions we want to touch on here? Phoene call? Yes,
why don't you do the Phoene call anyway? Is the question? Um,
why don't you do? There's a number of reasons I

(50:26):
don't do the Phoene call. Um, there there really are,
and one of them is so, if I'm being totally honest,
I was upset with the way the Phoene call was
taken from me, which is the absolute truth. So when
we start, when they started Girl Meets World, Michael without
and again I'm not trying to bash Michael in any way,
shape or form, but without any apologized to me for this, frankly, Um,

(50:48):
without calling me, without letting me know, without doing anything.
He just popped in a tape of the Phoene Call
to the to Rowan and Sabrina and said, you guys
are now doing this. You're both doing this when you
meet Mr Phoenie. Uh. Other than it's saying Phoenie with
an exclamation point in the script, the Phoenie call was mine,
like I created that out of whole cloth. It was
just I just made that my own. So I thought

(51:12):
without even being asked to then take it and give
it away. Um, I didn't think was very cool. Uh
So Michael apologized to me. He's like, you're right, that
was And I told him that. I was like, that's
you know, that wasn't cool. He's like, I didn't even
he he said, look, I honestly didn't even think about
it that way. You're right I should have. Let's do
some kind of passing of the torch. And I went

(51:34):
in front of the audience at Girl Meets World, I
did it one more time and I said I passed
it on to the girls. And I got that because
and this is a true story, I was doing a
cartoon called ThunderCats, which was one of my favorite cartoons
ever growing up, and I got a chance to play
lion O and the original lion O actor Larry Kenny,
played my dad on the show. And he was at

(51:54):
a convention and he's he actually sent me the clip
and I thought this was really cool where somebody said,
can you do the famous lion lion ThunderCats hoe and
he said, I will do it one more time for you.
But then it's Wills and I am officially packed passing
the torch and I thought that was cool. He says
he's never done it since. He knows he has, but
he says he's never done it since. Um so I
took that coupled with kind of like you know, that

(52:15):
was mine and you gave it away, And I liked
this passing the torch thing, and I have haven't done
it since. It's also interesting. I mean, I know you've
talked about to me, you've talked, you've expressed this before.
You didn't even realize you had a catchphrase. It was
it was It was one of those funny bits. We
did a lot of bits on the show. Like you
remember in the first season, Ben kept saying like I'm

(52:36):
super boy or something. You did that, and they like
they try these things out and give us like catch
phrases or repetitive jokes, and like the Phoene Call was
just one of the many, like your your character has
so many. So it's really only in retrospect that it
became like a defining characteristic of the show. Yeah, it
also wasn't even named the Phoene Call until the last episode.

(52:59):
The very last episode, Eric says to to Phoenie, you know,
come on, be honest, you love the Phoene call. You're
gonna miss the Phoene call. That's the first time that
was ever said. So it wasn't even a It was
just it would say Mr Feenie, and I would then
make it nine minutes long. I mean that was all
that it was. It wasn't like the Phoene call. Um. So, yeah,
I had no idea that I had. I had my own.

(53:20):
Did I do that? I didn't know that. It's like
I didn't. I didn't know that. So yeah, so interesting.
That's that. That's the story behind the Phoenie call. Are
there any other what are the frequently asked question? Because
we do we always get the same frequently asked kind
And I'll be honest, I had a document with them
written down, and I don't know where the document is.

(53:41):
So that's a frequently asked question for Danielle is where
did you put that? Where? I got him? I got him,
I got him? Are you still friends? I think that
that much is obvious. You don't even need to answer that.
Oh did you actually cut your hair? O? Good one.
I sure did, with real scissors and everything. We can't
talk to me. We'll talk about that when that episode

(54:02):
comes around. Um, that's another week that I do have
very um strong memories, mostly of people yelling off stage
on the night it was going to happen. Um. It
was such a the amount of stress. Again, the importance
placed on hair in this show is weird, um, but
there was so much stress around the cutting of the

(54:24):
hair because you only get really one good take at it.
You get one good this before, and once that's cut,
you can't go back to Danielle has super long hair,
certainly not quick um. And it was Mike. I remember
the negotiation with Michael show me where, show me where
You're getting no because he did not want me to
cut my hair short. And you also have to This

(54:44):
was the first time you would ever cut your hair
in life. In life, I had I had a trim
when I was three years old because from the time
I was too my hair reached my butt. And when
I turned three, I had these little ringlet at the
bottom of my hair, and my mom decided I needed
a trim and she basically just cut the ringlets off

(55:05):
and that was the last time I ever cut my hair.
So I was either fifteen or sixteen years old. Other
than little trims, you know, I would get little little
like I'm talking half an inch off the bottom of
my hair. Otherwise I had that super long hair my
entire life. And yes, I got to be fifteen, sixteen
years old. I think I was fifteen, and I just

(55:26):
wanted to cut my hair. And I asked Michael over
a summer break, so our again, our schedule, we usually
started our seasons in August and then we would shoot
for three weeks, take a week off, shoot for three weeks,
take a week off, and then during holidays we get
two weeks off and we would shoot then straight until May,
and then May would start our summer break and we

(55:47):
would go on summer break from middle of May until August.
And somewhere in that summer I called Michael and said,
you know, I want to cut my hair. I guess
I just knew that. I wasn't that I couldn't just
cut it, but like it was like in my can tracked.
I don't know, I I knew better than to just
do it. And I said, I want to cut my hair.
Are you okay with that? And he said no, absolutely not,
no oh no, no, no, no no, And then it

(56:09):
was like, please, I've never cut it. I'm really tight
hot and I've never done it. I just I want
something new, And he said okay, but then you have
to let me, let me at least write an episode
about it. And I said okay. So I had to
wait until the episode came around. Um, so yes, I
really did cut my hair. Uh, and I can't wait
to talk about it when that episode gets around. That's
that's going to be really fun. You just said something
really interesting because it just had me flashback on something

(56:31):
to you instantly snapped to this place of I can't
do anything with my body or looks without permission, asking permission,
even when it was never really specifically said to. But
I remember asking if I could get a tattoo, asking
if I could cut my hair, asking if I It's like,
we just knew we're not allowed to do any of

(56:54):
this with it. Writer, weren't Wasn't there something where you
weren't allowed to roller blade? After a while, No, I
I went bungee jumping and skydiving. Remember the director that
we've just been like, don't, don't, don't, don't tell the producers,
don't don't tell them you're doing this stuff. I did
that with helicopter lessons, where you can't we can't let
you fly, And I was like, I don't think they
ever told me to not rollerblade, but that makes such

(57:15):
a great ninth story that maybe the story I heard
frequently asked questions. The story I heard was that you
were rollerblading at uh the oak Woid where we all lived,
and somebody broke their leg. It wasn't you, but somebody
broke their leg. Your mom my mom broke because that
was the four boy meats world. That was because I
was gonna say, I thought then the story I heard
as they heard about that, they were like, no more rollerblading,

(57:37):
Like that's it, You're done. Wait did you both live
at Oakwood when you first when the show first season
of the show, we both lived at Oakwood's. I was
in the Z building and I was okay, then that
was the year I was in qu Okay because we
were pretty far away if I remember the buildings that Okay,
So just for everybody in the oak Wod apartments of
these legendary month to month furnished apartments that all actors,

(57:59):
especially child actors, would live in because you can move
and their families you can move in for one month
at a time, and it would have all the furniture,
and so everybody would come for pilot season or to
make a movie or to do one show, and so yeah,
so we would live there with our you know, you
live with your roommate, Spencer. I lived with my brother
who was on a TV show at the same time
that we were doing Boy Met the World. He was

(58:19):
on The Mommy's We both had TV shows going at
the same starting at the same time, and so my
mom would be shuttling us from both sets. But we
all lived at the oak Woods, which is this just
this hilly apartment complex in Burbank and it's all paved,
so it was rollerblading heaven. I mean it was also
like summer camp for me, Like we would go for
pilot season and you need all these child actors who

(58:40):
would be coming from all over the country, and you'd
all just hang out at the pool and the hot
blade together. We'll have so many oak with child child
actors and divorced men. That's the people that lived at
the oak Wand for the record, I did not live
at the oak Wood because I'm a native Native Southern Californian,
So I lived with my family. We lived in calabasas

(59:01):
Um I just because Yeah, you kept saying we all
lived there, and I was like, Oh, they're going to
think we all went the same complex. I have one
more frequently asked question which I think would be a
good one to go out on, and we have to
keep it kind of brief because we go, but what
are you guys doing now? A podcast? That's a real question, John,

(59:22):
I know this is the where are they now questioned?
A little bio of we're what we've been up to?
Okay from Since two thousand seventeen, I have been a
full time sitcom TV director UM, which is just a
continuation of what we're talking about here. It's something that
I didn't know I ever wanted to do. I got
the opportunity to do it for the first time on

(59:43):
Girl Mead's World, Uh, fell in love with it and
have been very fortunate to be able to make a
career of it. UM. So I've been doing that full time.
I also my husband Jensen and I have a production company.
We have a couple of shows UM in early stages
of production. We have a pilot out and a few
their things UM. And then I also have a hair
care company, which I am extremely proud of. And it

(01:00:05):
is a very small team. There are four of us
total in the entire company, from development to being delivered
on your doorstep. We're involved in every single aspect of it. UM.
It's called Be Free by Daniel Fishel and uh. I
love it and I'm super proud of it. And then
I also have two children, which, although that is a
personal life thing, it's also a job. Yeah you go, writer, Yeah,

(01:00:27):
I am also a father. Right now, I am full
time solo parenting well of my wife, who is an
actor's producer, director writer, is off producing a feature film
in New York at the moment, so this I am
on a month. I'm about eight weeks into solo parenting
while she's gone. So my main job right now is
raising in our seven year old and making sure, you know,

(01:00:49):
he gets the school and his shoelaces are tied, which
is lovely and awesome. I also run a I do
in my own podcast, which is called Literary Disco. I
am a huge book nerd, which you guys will remember
from way back. I always have been so literary discos.
So I've been doing that for like ten years, podcasting
about books UM. And we're relaunching a new season of
that I'm by. My main job is writer, writer, director.

(01:01:11):
I directed a lot of The Girl Meets World episodes
and really loved it. I've made a bunch of short
films and but mostly I've made a living for the
last twelve years as a screenwriter. Uh you know. And
of course the life of a screenwriter is you write
movies and then they never actually get made. Um. But
I've been paid and I've been doing you know, I've
I've enjoyed it. But I'm ready to write and direct

(01:01:32):
an actual movie movie on my own, a feature. I
love it, um. I you know. I stopped acting probably
ten years ago, and it was the best decision I
ever made. As much as I love actors and I
love the industry, I really like being within it, but
on the other side of the camera. So directing is
my dream job. It's a very hard job to get.
So writing is what I do all the time. Are

(01:01:54):
you writing anything with anyone you know? Right now? Actually,
one of my like one of my many projects is
with the incredibly talented wilfordl We're ready to feature script
right now. Um yeah, And it's probably the best thing
I'm working on right now. I'm really excited about it. Um. Yeah,
we're very excited. UM. I left the industry at the
on camera side of the industry as well due to

(01:02:16):
an anxiety disorder, which I've talked about a lot of times.
I will be getting back on camera eventually. I'm slowly
but surely getting there. But my love and passion since
I was nineteen twenty years old has been voiceover voiceover industry. UM.
I've written for a number of the animated series that
I do, and it is still the joy of my

(01:02:38):
life to be a voiceover actor. I have a movie
that just came out last week called DC Superhero Girls
and Teen Titans Mayhem in the Multiverse. I have two
new series coming out which I'm not allowed to talk
about right as of yet, but they're very very cool.
And I also do a podcast about the entertainment industry
about the voiceover industry called I Hear Voices with Christy Carlson,

(01:02:59):
Roma Know who. I did a show called Kim Possible
with and Uh. We do a show where not only
do we interview all of the best voiceover actors in
the world, but amateur voiceover actors get to come on
and actually do a voiceover session. With those voiceover actors,
and then we're gonna take all that stuff and animated,
so people get to be in their own cartoon. It
is very fun. It's called I hear voices. Check it out.

(01:03:20):
But that has been my life. And then I do
a bunch of conventions, hopefully a lot of them. With
these people here who I love like family. We do
do something together which is pretty amazing. And I get
to travel the world with my wife and uh just
meet fans and it's absolutely wonderful. So that's what I've
been doing. I have one final question for all of us,

(01:03:40):
what is the what's the best thing you can hope
for coming out of this podcast and rewatching Boy meets
World and what is the thing you're the most nervous
or scared of? Like high point, low point? What's the
best and worst of what we're about to and indulge
ourselves in. Wow, good question. Do you have anything off

(01:04:02):
the top of your head? Writer? I don't know, I mean,
I have you know. I was I was at a
wedding like a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago
as a friend's wedding, and um, I met an actress
comedian who was there you know, it was one of
those three day weddings. So this is like day three
when we were actually at the wedding and sitting down
and she was like, hey, you know I grew up

(01:04:25):
on on your show. Um, and you know you're really cool,
like you seem like really healthy and like really cool.
What how do you relate to that show now? Like
what do you what do you? How do you feel
about it? And it was like the most for the
first time, I was like I have such a long answer. Uh.
And you know, I say for the first time because

(01:04:47):
I think that for every other stage in my life
I had really pat easy answers. You know, it was
I'm so lucky to be on the TV show, or
then it was like, oh no, I'm just a student
now I don't want to talk about that, or and
you know, I just felt such a mature question like
here I am early forties with another actor in their
forties asking me a very honest question like what was that?

(01:05:08):
And and I realized I could talk for probably an
hour and a half if I let myself. And so
I think that that's what this show is for me personally,
like is trying to come to terms with the with
what Boy Meets World means because it had such a
cultural impact outside of my control. When you're a kid actor,
like we were saying about our hair and what not,
so many things are outside of your control, and as
positive as that can be, because like, hey, I made

(01:05:30):
enough money to be able to send myself through college,
you know, like my parents didn't have to pay for that. Um,
I've been able to have this great life as access
point to the writing career that I now have. So
there's so many positive things that came from Boy Meets World.
There's also a lot of negative memories I have of
of of how it affected my life and and for
a long time I wanted to be anything but Seawan
Hunter from Boy Meets World. I spent most of my

(01:05:52):
twenties running away from it. And now I'm at a
place where I think I can kind of be mature
enough to see see it from both sides and to
talk that out. So I don't have an easy answer,
but I think that that's why we should do this
podcast is because I think it's it's a it's a
really complicated question and has a really complicated answer. Yeah,
I don't. I think that's that's kind of where I

(01:06:13):
would go. I mean, the the high point for me
is doing it with both of you. Um, the being
able to do something that Again, I watched the first
episode and I genuinely had a huge spike of anxiety
pressing play before I hit the first episode of the show.
And one of the things that helps me and always
has helped me, is being around people that I love

(01:06:34):
and I trust and knowing that I'm with the both
of you and going on this journey where we can
talk about all this stuff together and you're talking about
it with people that went through the same thing. You know,
you're you're you're in the trenches together, and while our
experiences might have differed, we can come at it from
the same place, which is something that I'm very much
looking forward to. What scares me is pulling back the

(01:06:56):
curtain to realize that the great and powerful Laws is
just a man. Uh. That's what scares me is that
these memories that I have that are so wonderful for me,
uh and so incredible that really, when I do look
at them as an adult, I might look back and
maybe they're not as great as I remember them being. Um,
which again I don't know Frankly and I and there
there's it's gonna bring up a lot of a lot

(01:07:18):
of different emotions all the way through, and their emotions
that I want to We keep using the word unpacked,
that I want to unpack. I'm glad I'm doing it
with the both of you. But that's what scares me
the most is I I have maybe put the show
and my experiences on the show on a little bit
of a pedestal, and I'm making sure that the pedestal
is marble and not feather. And when I look back,

(01:07:40):
I'm hoping it's as I remember. And that's I think
what scares me the most is is, you know, again
getting having some of the guest cast come back on,
and having other people we worked with come back on
and maybe their experiences weren't that great and and it's
those kind of things that's gonna make me re look
at my own past from a different perspective of and

(01:08:01):
I think I need to Frankly, I mean, nobody's life
is perfect. I don't care how amazing you think your
experience was. It was still just an experience that had
highs and lows. And Uh, it's going to be interesting
to go back. So that's again a long winded, a
long winded answer that got us nowhere, But that's exactly
kind of how I feel. It's those are those exactly
why I asked I am. I am very much looking

(01:08:24):
forward to going through this with you guys. It says
it is, for lack of the better term, it's it's
a safe space. It feels safe to go through this
with you guys. Um, I'm really looking forward to it.
I'm hoping, like I said, that it will bring back
some memories for me, because I do have very fond
memories of most of the time on Boy Meets World,
and I'd like to have more of them. Um, every

(01:08:45):
time you guys remind me of stuff or say things
and I'm like, no, I don't remember that, I start
to like, I think, and I think and I think.
Like when writer mentioned some of the small audience on Wednesdays,
I was like, I do kind of remember that. Towards
the end, like, oh, that's interesting. So I'm excited to
say what it brings up. Like I said, I'm excited
for the nostalgia dive. I will be perfectly honest and

(01:09:06):
say that my the thing that makes me the most
nervous is I know how beloved this show is to
so many people, and we meet them, We meet fans
at cons and they tell us these very personal stories
about what the show meant, and that always means so
much to us. We walk away from those conventions and
we say, I am so glad I met everybody that

(01:09:28):
I met this weekend and I heard their stories. And
I want to watch the show and be very honest
in the podcast about the feelings it brings up for me,
the thoughts I have about a scene or a storyline
or the acting, whether it's my own or you know whatever.
I want to be able to be very honest about it.
And my what makes me the most nervous is possibly

(01:09:50):
ruining something that some maybe even just one memory for
somebody that they that they love. Um and so that
makes me nervous. But I'm gonna be I'm gonna just
have to be very honest about how I feel, and
hopefully it's it's mostly you know, rosie and fun and wonderful,
the way it is in my memory. But uh I,
I just want us to be as honest as possible
as we go through this, because I think that's gonna

(01:10:11):
be what's best for everyone. Yeah, I think so too.
That's good. That was a great answer. I want to
take that one. So next week we're jumping in. We
are rewatching the pilot, starting in with episode number one
oh one. The pilot it was called um and So yeah,

(01:10:33):
next week, big, big week. I can't wait to jump
in and uh, listen, writer, I think our first week
since this podcast was your idea. You have the honors
of our tagline, we love you all. Pod dismissed Pod
Meets World as an I heart podcast produced and hosted
by Daniel Fishel Wilfredel and writer Strong. Executive producers Jensen

(01:10:55):
Carp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo,
producer and editor, Tara Sudbach, producer, Lorraine Verruez, engineer and
Boy Meets World super fan Easton Allen. Our theme song
is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram
at Pod Meets World Show or email us at Pod
Meets World Show at gmail dot com.